Letting You Go
by Moiranne Rose
Summary: Challenge Fic 24/51: If you love me, you'll let me go. Do I regret doing that? Yaoi/Shonen-ai, Angst-ridden, yet I manage a happy enough ending.


**Challenge Fic Topic: Drugs/Smoking  
**

**Title: Letting You Go**

**Summary: If you love me, you'll let me go. Slight yaoi, Angst-ridden, yet I manage a happy (enough) ending.**

* * *

That's my third cigarette already. But somehow, I've stopped trying to understand why I continue when it's going to kill me. Maybe I prefer dying on my own terms. Maybe that's why you did what you did in the end. But I now it was probably something deeper than that.

_Flick._

The lighter burns a small flame. I can't remember whether it was present or past, but I see a cigarette lowered to it, enough to get the flame going. In my mind, I can't separate that day from today. Maybe it's the same sunset that came after it. Maybe it's the breeze that's messing up my hair. Maybe it's the fact I've broken into your bedroom, just to look out from the place you looked out from. Just so I could stand in your shoes, and look out to what you always see.

_Suicide._

You knew it was suicide,didn't you? That even going to that place was sheer idiocy. I don't underestimate your intelligence at least. But, you had to, right?

I remember we talked, standing where I'm standing now, hands in our pockets, breeze chilly and sharp. You knew even then that you'd never return. And I knew it too. Why didn't I stop you?

"_I have to go and investigate Reno."_

"_No! Rufus already said, Sephiroth is out there, Tseng! Even if he's in Costa Del Sol, in some forgotten bar, drinking his ass off, he can be there in a blink of an eye. Don't you know how powerful he is?"_

"_I do."_

"_Then don't be stupid Tseng. Even you can't match his standards."_

"_I never said I would."_

"_Argh. __**Damn **__you Tseng. Can't you listen to yourself? You're making no bloody sense!"_

"_No 'bloody' sense?"_

"_You know what I mean."_

By this time, the sun's gone down, and it did at that point too. I was glad for it, that time, I guess now, I am too. I had blushed, I don't know why. I'd always been good at acting. Always. I could always fake that I never had feelings other than childish happiness and mischievous grins were my trademark. So why had I lost it then? I had turned away, scared you might see that in my eyes. All the things I didn't and still don't want anyone to see.

"_I'll just be going for a week."_

I'd whirled around right then. You really didn't get it, did you?

"_Are you that blind? You can be killed Tseng! Do you have any idea what that means?"_

"_We were always on the brink of death Reno."_

You were so calm, collected, I fumed, fizzled, blew. How could you do that kind of thing? Were you that stupid? I'd always been passionate. About what I liked, what I wanted to protect. This time was no different.

Remembering the next few moments was difficult. The butt of the cigarette's burnt low. Without stopping to think, I've gotten out another one and lit it before dropping the other butt down 70 floors of office, doom and ShinRa.

"_Tseng, this is not about what it's been in the past! It's what's happening now!"_

"_This __**is **__what's happening now. I'm going."_

"_Damn you! Can't you stop this madness?"_

"_Someone has to do it. Better me than someone who would mess it up."_

At that point, I didn't even care about the subtle insult.

"_But why now to start playing the hero?"_

"_Since when did you start to care?"_

Your tone was biting. When? I didn't know when. I only know why. And how.

"_I...I..."_

"_Lost for words?"_

"_It's because...I love you, damn it!"_

The bombshell had been dropped. I remember the way your black eyes glowed unfathomably at me. Then you looked, I don't know, sad? Was it? Or was it laughter that was in your eyes? Oh Reno is so stupid, isn't he?

"_Reno...I-"_

"_No, never mind, just go then. You can just go. Heck what everyone else feels."_

Then came something I didn't expect in the slightest. But, remembering it is enough for me to feel the heat of embarrassment flush over again.

_You've stepped forward, hands coming out of your pocket. You catch my turning shoulder, and forcibly pull me round again, till my hateful, hurt eyes meet yours straight on, and the remains of the cigarette falls to the ground. Then you do something I never expected you to do. Your hand raises to my hair and you pull me, with surprising strength, towards you._

_You kissed me._

_It wasn't the kind of fireworks display I'd dreamed it would be. But it was real, passionate, and somehow, both absolutely right and absolutely wrong. I'm caught up in the fragility of the whole thing. Then, it becomes so heated, everything's gone from winter to summer in a second. I can't breathe, but I suddenly feel like I don't need oxygen anymore._

_Then we break apart. Panting heavily, we're flushed and surprised at the twist of the evening. Then you smile, or was it a trick of the light? And then you, in a detached sort of way, trace the lines of red that I have on my cheekbones. And you tell me, with a voice that's so pleading for me to give in,_

"_If you love me, then you'll let me go."_

_And then you leave me. Standing alone, still out of breath, heart mended and broken in a matter of minutes._

I bet you left laughing, that's one more person I've broken. But I now toy with the idea that you could have left, sadly, but as if it was your duty to go.

Now the helicopter's landed, bringing the news I knew would come.

And I smile, strangely in the circumstances, even as officials come down to inform me. I look to the setting sun, which is long below the height of ShinRa buildings and the mako reactor on the horizon, and suddenly I can see why you wanted to go in the first place.

Because, while I'm still subject to Rufus, demands of a Turk and never-ending work cycles, you're already up there, somewhere in a sea of green, laughing at me.

* * *

**A/N: With death comes freedom. With love comes heartbreak. With my stories comes angst. The only thing I write well.**

**Actually, I dedicate this to Mad the Badass. Fellow shipper for TsengReno, and writer of some of my favourite stories. Thanks a lot.**

**Moiranne Rose (still not begging)**


End file.
